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Held in a cell, Sivaji reflects how he came to be under police scrutiny and his subsequent arrest for a variety of economic offenses. He had returned to Chennai from the U.S. to live with his parents and maternal uncle, and had hoped to invest money in colleges and hospitals so that people who are not privileged can benefit - much to the chagrin of a sophisticated goon, Adisheshan, who threatens him, and asks him not to tread on his territory.
Disregarding this and hoping to get his projects going, Sivaji runs into bureaucratic corruption and red-tape - so much so that he gives in and bribes an official Rs.4 Crores to complete his Rs.200 Crore project. An enraged Adisheshan has the local politician stop the work, but Sivaji bribes the latter Rs.50 Crores, after liquefying most of his assets. While he is busy wooing and attempting to marry Tamizhselvi/Vidyabharti Ramlingam, a new politician takes over, stops his project, and demands another Rs.50 Crores.
Unable to come up with the money, Sivaji takes the matter to Court but loses, and is rendered penniless. To make matters even worse, Tamizhselvi refuses to marry him as astrologically they are not compatible. While recalling these incidents, betrayed by the person he trusted, there is very little he can do but accept the fate that his opponents have decided for him.

Storyline

The film begins in medias res, with a masked person being brought to the Central Jail in Chennai, India. When asked by a fellow-inmate for the reason behind his imprisonment, the masked person replies that he is imprisoned for attempting to do good for the people. The masked person is revealed to be Sivaji (Rajinikanth).

The film then winds into a flashback that shows him returning to Chennai from the USA as a software systems architect. He establishes a non-profit trust called the Sivaji Foundation to build a network of hospitals and educational institutions to serve the poor free of cost. However, he faces the obstacles of a corrupt civil service. Sivaji pays the bribes demanded by the government officials for the greater good of the people, but at one stage, the bribes demanded become so high that he has to mortgage his house to pay them. He also faces another obstacle in the form of Adiseshan (Suman), an influential businessman and philanthropist, who sees Sivaji Foundation as competition, because he too runs educational institutions and hospitals which are profit-making centres for him. Using his political strings, he ensures the government repeals the permits they issued on the construction of Sivaji Foundation. Sivaji approaches a lawyer to fight his case, selling his own car to pay the lawyer's fee. However in court, he is forced to admit he bribed numerous officials. This undermines his case and the judge passes a stay order on the construction of Sivaji Foundation.

In parallel, Sivaji falls in love with an orthodox girl named Tamizhselvi (Shriya). Her family is initially scared and angered by the overbearing nature of Sivaji's family, though they eventually accede to Sivaji's request for Tamizhselvi's hand in marriage after a lot of persuasion. However upon asking for his horoscope, an astrologer predicts impeding doom leading up to Sivaji's death if the two are united. When Tamizhselvi refuses the proposal due to her concern for Sivaji, he calms her fears and manages to convince her to marry him.

Following Sivaji's loss in the court case, Adiseshan insults him and gives him a INR 1 coin, challenging him to try beggary for survival. Ironically, using this very coin, he turns the tables around and forms a plan. He uses the coin to make a phone call to Adiseshan, warning him about the next day's false income tax raid. Adiseshan packs up the black documents and shifts them to farm house. Sivaji blocks it, uses it in blackmailing Adiseshan to give him INR 1 billion (1 billion) and succeeds. Although sivaji is fulfilled with the money to continue producing Sivaji Foundation, he feels, If a single rich person has 2 billion rupees of black money then how much it would be in India. And plans to bring them out. He obtains details on people who have black money, and blackmails them to give him half of their illegal wealth. He then transfers the money to bank accounts (owned by friends and contacts) around the world by means of hawala forgery, who deposit the money as donations to the Sivaji Foundation, making the money usable and legitimate.He informs the Income Tax Investigation and Vigilance Department about the details of the illegal money held by the tax evaders (including Adiseshan) and they are arrested by the Income Tax department and brought to court. Sivaji reopens the foundation, and soon begins to realise his dream of providing free, good quality education, infrastructure, services and employment to people in every district of Tamil Nadu. His adversaries, led by Adiseshan, seek to find out how he converted their illegal money to a usable form and for this they use the CBI. They take advantage of Tamizhselvi's innocence by threatening her with danger to Sivaji's life unless she reveals about how Sivaji converted the illegal money to an usable form. Fearing for him, she turns over his laptop with all the information regarding the various money transactions from people who had black money to his friends' bank accounts around the world. With presentable evidence, Sivaji is arrested by the CBI and the scene returns to the beginning of the film with Sivaji in the Central Jail.

In the jail, Adiseshan and the police force Sivaji to open his laptop as it has a voice recognition system. When Sivaji refuses, Adiseshan loses control and mercilessly assaults him, to the point that it seems that Sivaji had died due to the injuries sustained in the assault. To cover this up, Adiseshan and the police organise for thugs to shoot up the police van that will carry Sivaji's dead body, making it look like murder by a third party. Sivaji however was merely faking his death; he was informed of the plans to kill him by a sympathetic police officer prior to the interrogation. Left alone in the room, he electrocutes himself. Sivaji's friend Dr. Chezhian (Raghuvaran) and Tamizhselvi intercept the police van (informed by Sivaji after he got the police officer's warning) and manage to cart away Sivaji's 'dead' body under the cover of a bus before the thugs could open fire. In Sivaji's stead they plant a dummy. While everyone thinks that Sivaji is 'dead', Dr. Chezhian revives him using a defibrillator. Following Sivaji's 'death', Adiseshan and the CBI still try to open Sivaji's laptop by using people who talk like Sivaji; however this fails and all the data in the laptop is erased.

A few days later, while everyone wonders about the future of Sivaji Foundation, the revived Sivaji returns to take control over the foundation in a disguise of a friend, M.G. Ravichandran (N.T. Ranga Rao in Telugu, A. Bachchan in Hindi). Though Adiseshan immediately realises that Ravichandran is none other than Sivaji, he is unable to prove this to the police due to the tangible evidence of Sivaji's 'death'. Ravichandran promises to avenge Sivaji's 'death' and eventually manages to corner Adiseshan in the terrace of his medical college and fights him. After their fight, a blinded Adiseshan is killed in a stampede.

The film ends with an epilogue which shows Sivaji tipping of the Income Tax Department,arrest of tax evaders,money card and the foundation's success, and India becoming so economically and industrially successful that it becomes a G10 country.

Movie Rating

Based on 2 ratings

Did you know? The song "Sahana" was shot in a glass palace constructed solely for the song at a cost of Rs. 1 crore wherein after shooting, the palace was taken apart and all the glass panes were sold. Read More

Continuity "Sivaji" tries to impress the heroine by making himself fair. She replies back stating that she likes his original dark skin. But in the entire movie, Sivaji changes the color of his skin on and off in different scenes.

Crew/Equipment Visible At the start of Oru Koodai's sunlight song, all the crew members are visible on the Sivaji's (Rajini) glasses.

Miscellaneous The CBI officer who arrests "Sivaji" cites FERA act violation. But in the year 2000, FERA act was repealed and replaced by FEMA act.

Miscellaneous In the scene at the open air movie theatre, "Sivaji" is seen in a Toyota Land Cruiser with his wife. When he has a "car fight" with the goons, the car changes to a Mahindra Scorpio towards the end.

Trivia:

Ayesha Takia, Jyothika, Trisha Krishnan. 'Nayanthara' and Sneha were offered the lead role, but she turned it down because she had problems with the Tamil language.

Originally, Ratnavelu was asked to be the cinematographer of the film, but rejected it because he wanted to work for Sukumar's 'Jagadam' and eventually, Anand KV took the role of cinematography.

The title track was the first song shot for the film and was also the most expensive song shot for the film, costing Rs. 3.5 crores.

The word "Balleilakka" was derived from the word 'Balalaika', a term referred to a Russian guitar.

The song "Balleilakka" features most of the crew in the film.

The actresses considered to dance in the item number "Balleilakka" included 'Sadha', Shilpa Shetty, Manisha Koirala, Bipasha Basu, 'Asin Thottumkal' and Mallika Sherawat, until Nayanthara finally got the part.

The song "Style" was originally called "Oru Koodai Sunlight." and was shot in Bilbao, Spain.

The song "Sahana" was shot in a glass palace constructed solely for the song at a cost of Rs. 1 crore wherein after shooting, the palace was taken apart and all the glass panes were sold.

In the film, "Boss" stands for "Bachelor of Social Service."

Vadivelu was considered for the role of Sivaji's "Mama", after he received rave reviews for his comic chemistry in Chandramukhi with Rajnikanth, however Vivek was selected.

Prakash Raj was almost immediately selected to play the role of Adisesha in this film and was offered to Sathyaraj, Mohanlal, Amitabh Bachchan, Sanjay Dutt and Nana Patekar before it was finally accepted by Suman.

The hospital seen in the film was actually a re-modeled bank.

"Sivaji" is the name of Rajnikanth's character with reference to his birth name which is Shivaji Rao Gaekwad.

"Sivaji" was considerded to be one of the costliest Tamil and Indian film ever made and was rumored to have cost between 650-800 million Indian rupees.

The movie was released with 4600 prints worldwide and created a record in India as the only movie to be screened with more than 700 shows on a single day

This is the first Tamil film and the first non Hindi Indian movie to feature in UK Top 10.

As of July 2007, "Sivaji" is highest grossing Tamil movie ever and had grossed 100 crores (1 billion) Indian rupees in it's third weekend.

Rajnikanth appears as a white skinned European guy in a song sequence and the Digital skin grafting effects used to create the dark skinned Rajini into a white skin guy took almost one year with the help of 25 technicians

"Sivaji" is the first Indian film to incorporate the latest 4K resolution technology that is used only on big-budget Hollywood films. In India, 2K resolution for digital intermediate (DI) is the set standard.

SP Balasubramaniam sang a segment of "Balleilakka" for two minutes non-stop.

A trailer of Rajnikanth's next film, the animated feature Sultan aka Kochadaiyaan, was released and shown with this film.

Near the film's climax, "Sivaji" assumes the false identity of MG Ravichandran, is a reference to the old superstars of Tamil cinema, Shivaji Ganesan and MG Ramachandran.

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